Aleksia had to turn away from the Brownie to keep her from seeing the smile. The hand, for a moment in front of Elena's mouth, told her that the other Godmother had the same reaction, despite how serious the situation was. Not that Aleksia was unhappy about getting Veroushka or a Sorceress here in her absence. Very much the contrary. It was a relief to know that so meone would be here to handle trouble to her or a Godmotherly crisis.
“I believe we have come to the best plan that can be made, under the circumstances,” Elena said, gravely, after taking her hand away from her mouth. “Aleksia, good fortune. There is no one else I would rather see dealing with this, and now I will leave you to get on with it.”
Aleksia nodded gravely, and she and Elena dismissed their mirror-spells simultaneously.
Then she turned to Rosemary. “Can you think of anything else that might serve to help?” she asked. “And thank you for demanding that someone replace me here. I think that the request came better from you than from me.”
Rosemary sniffed with self-deprecation. “'Tis your job to be the Godmother. 'Tis ours to think of this place, this Palace and the needs of the territory, regardless of who is Godmother here.”
Aleksia nodded soberly. That summed things up pretty well, actually.
“As for what I think might help, I'd look to that great hulk of a Bear that's down in the kitchen, eating enough for twelve,” the Brownie said promptly. “We can be putting a pack on him and sending him after you. He won't be as swift as you, but I've seen those Bears on the move, and they can do a fair pace when they're minded to it. Then once you come to earth, he can track you by scent. More to the point, he belongs there, so he won't be drawing any attention to himself. It might be he'll get to you about the time it's too hard or dangerous to hunt for yourself. And it wouldn't hurt to have him on your side.”
Privately, Aleksia thought that the Bear was going to be of less use that way than help that Elena could send, but she kept that thought to herself. “Then that's what we'll do,” she said.
Rosemary looked as satisfied as she was likely to. “Best get yourself going then, Godmother,” was all she said, as the others turned to leave. “If things are chancy as you think, no point wasting time.”
Aleksia had no intention of wasting time. “All right then. I'll want the white bird harness and the smallest pack on it. In the pack I'll want my lightest hand-mirror, a fire-starter and a flute, in case I need to use Sammi magic. And a little blank book linked to the library; I'm rather sure Citrine has something of the sort about.”
“Nothing else?” Rosemary looked as if she, too, was thinking.
“The Swan can't carry more than that even though the Bear form can, and I'll have to cache it all somewhere if I become a bird of prey.” It was not the best solution, but at least shape-shifted she would not need to worry much about shelter or food, and the one thing she felt she absolutely had to have was a mirror.
“I'll get it ready. Where do you want it?” the Brownie asked.
“The North Tower. And make sure my commonplace book is where any replacement can find it. That will tell her what I am watching, besides this situation.” Aleksia was already heading in that direction before the Brownie finished speaking. Now that the decision was made, she felt a sense of urgency, and a Godmother swiftly learned to trust her instincts once she had settled into the job. Whatever this was all about, the tale needed her. Needed her now.
The North Tower hadn't been used for a very long time; not since Veroushka had been in residence, in fact. Aleksia's mentor had liked to shape-shift into a bird once every few days at the least; it had been her way of coping with the isolation of this place, Aleksia suspected, and her way of escaping the sense of being trapped in the Palace. Perhaps Aleksia had her own form of escape through her mirrors, and that was why she had not felt it so urgent to keep in practice shifting. The North Tower itself was nothing more than walls surrounding a spiral staircase that led to an enclosed and roofed platform with two enormous doors that opened up into thin air. When there was a guest here, the North Tower was kept locked; the last thing Aleksia wanted was for someone unwary to go exploring and fall from the top of it. Or jump…there had been guests who had been so despondent before the end of their tales that they might have done just that. No one in her right mind would go up there even to survey the countryside. The mirrors gave you a better view; there were mirrors set into the outside Palace walls facing every direction, and it was so cold and windy up here that unprotected flesh would freeze far too easily.
There was an addition to the otherwise bare room since Veroushka's departure: a full-length mirror. As might have been expected, Aleksia found it easier to do an initial shift from human to animal if she could see herself and use her own mirror-magic to help. Veroushka had shifted so often that her own body-memory made a mirror unnecessary.
She stood before the mirror still fully clothed. Unlike Veroushka, who expected to return to a warm Palace with everything she needed in it, and could thus drop her clothing and perform a simple shift without worrying about what she was wearing, Aleksia was going to have to do something a bit trickier, a combination of shape-shifting and transformation magic. Her gown was going to have to become her feathers — or her hair — or her fur. Since it was not actually a part of her, she would have less control over it than her own flesh.
So, as she stared into the mirror, it was her gown she concentrated primarily on first, with the briefest of nods to her own form. With her eyes narrowed in concentration, she carefully gathered some of the magic of the Palace itself. The gown shimmered, shivered, became misty and indistinct as she bent her will and the magic on it. Then, with a feeling as if a little whirlwind whipped her clothing around her before wafting away again, and a brief hum of power, the image that looked at her from the mirror changed.
The Aleksia that stood there was still recognizable as herself, but as a version of herself that was a strange hybrid of woman and bird. She nodded in satisfaction; she planned to become as big a Swan as could be credible. She had already lost her voice; the lengthened neck could not support it.
She beat the wings against the air experimentally; they felt strong and sturdy. They would serve as a weapon at need; anyone who had ever experienced the power in a goose or Swan's wings knew very well that a blow from one could knock a man unconscious if aimed correctly. And she was about to become the biggest Swan that had ever graced the sky, correspondingly strong. She was not proof against an arrow or a spear, of course, but she rather doubted that the false Snow Queen was going to use either against her in this form.
Once again she gathered the magic of her Palace around her, and with it, her will.
She stared fixedly into the mirror, while in her mind she summoned every memory of what it had felt like, as well as what it had looked like, when last she was a Swan. How her chest had thrust forward, her hips behind, and yet she had not felt overbalanced. The odd clumsiness of the webbed feet and the relatively short, bowed legs. How her neck had a kind of life of its own, her vision had been spread to either side rather than being focused in front, the feeling of having her nose and mouth merged into one and made hard, her tongue shrunk, and her sense of taste and smell dulled to almost nothing. She concentrated on all of these things, on what she saw before her and what she wanted to see. She held herself, poised like a diver, winding it all tighter and tighter, until it felt as if she must let it all go or explode.